The Norwegian artist and writer returns with lead single Female Vampire – part of an investigation of the “most terrifying blood: menstruation”
We called Jenny Hval’s last LP, apocalypse, girl, “a politically charged fever dream… wild rush in and out of concepts and form often sits somewhere between reality and fantasy… Confounding, yes, but thrillingly satisfying nonetheless.”
Hval returns this autumn with her next album Blood Bitch, which promises to be similarly satisfying.
“Blood Bitch is an investigation of blood,” writes Hval of the forthcoming album. “Blood that is shed naturally. The purest and most powerful, yet most trivial, and most terrifying blood: Menstruation. The white and red toilet roll chain which ties together the virgins, the whores, the mothers, the witches, the dreamers, and the lovers.
Blood Bitch is also a fictitious story, fed by characters and images from horror and exploitation films of the ’70s. With that language, rather than smart, modern social commentary, I found I could tell a different story about myself and my own time: a poetic diary of modern transience and transcendence.
There is a character in this story that is a vampire Orlando, traveling through time and space. But there is also a story here of a 35-year old artist stuck in a touring loop, and wearing a black wig. She is always up at night, jet lagged, playing late night shows – and by day she is quietly resting over an Arp Odyssey synthesizer while a black van drives her around Europe and America.
So this is my most fictional and most personal album. It’s also the first album where I’ve started reconnecting with the goth and metal scene I started out playing in many years ago, by remembering the drony qualities of Norwegian Black Metal. It’s an album of vampires, lunar cycles, sticky choruses, and the smell of warm leaves and winter.”
See the tracklisting and artwork below, and listen to Female Vampire just below that. Blood Bitch will be released via Scared Bones on 30 September.
Tracklisting
01. Ritual Awakening
02. Female Vampire
03. In The Red
04. Conceptual Romance
05. Untamed Region
06. The Great Undressing
07. Period Piece
08. The Plague
09. Secret Touch
10. Lorna
